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Appendix: Response to Wise's Comments
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Response to "Radioactive Halos: Geologic Concerns"
Robert V. Gentry
(Reprinted from Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 25, March 1989)
This is a reply, on a paragraph basis, to K. Wise's comments in CRSQ 25, 171 (1989)
Pars. 1 and 2.—In these two paragraphs Wise mixes some of his own
views with mine. To clarify the issue, I have made a clear statement of my creation
model in A Tentative Creation Model in the appendix.
Pars. 3, 4, and 5.—There is no difficulty in studying polonium halos for
anyone who wishes to do so. Joly saw polonium halos and he had no museum
specimens to study. Henderson studied polonium halos at length and he had
no museum specimens. I have studied them at even greater length without museum
numbers with which to refer. The reason that polonium halos have been studied
without museum numbers is that they are of worldwide occurrence; they are
easy to find. I have reported polonium halos in granites and pegmatites from
several continents. Their occurrence is as widespread and pervasive as is the
occurrence of those rocks all over the world. University geological museums
contain countless thousands of rocks from such locations; so there is no dearth of
material to study polonium halos. Moreover, polonium halos do not change their
characteristics from one continent to the other so that their study is not
confined to a single site or location. If Wise needs material to study polonium
halos, all he has to do is order biotite specimens from Ward's Natural Science
Establishment in Rochester, New York. At any time during the past several years
Wise could have availed himself of this material and made as many
petrographic sections as he wished to study the rocks.
Pars. 6 and 7.—There is no question that polonium halos
in rocks raise some very disturbing issues for conventional uniformitarian geology. However,
Wise's assertion that I claim polonium halos are "always found in granites," is patently
untrue, In fact, if Wise had carefully read my scientific reports, he would
have seen that I specifically note the existence of polonium halos in Precambrian
pegmatites (Gentry et al., 1974), fluorite (Gentry, 1973, 1974) and cordierite
(Gentry, 1973). What Wise apparently has not understood is that the existence of
polonium halos in crystalline rocks served to identify these rocks as the
created rocks of this world and that further research will identify even other
varieties of rocks as being in this category. In particular, the existence of polonium
halos in the biotite at the Fission and Silver Crater Mines serves to identify the host
"vein dikes" as also being created rocks, and as already noted, 15 years ago
(Gentry, 1973) I published information on the existence of polonium halos in
cordierite; so there is no question that at that time I considered the cordierite and
its host rock to be among the created rocks. Contrary to Wise's evaluation, this
information does not present a difficulty to my creation model. Neither does the
inclusion of gneiss as a type of created rock cause a problem as Wise seems to imply.
The best that can be said is that it presents a problem for his
understanding of my creation model.
In addition, I must note that rhyolite is not granite. Rhyolite and granite have only
one thing in common and that is elemental composition. However, granite
and rhyolite differ somewhat in mineral composition, quite considerably in mineral grain
size, and especially in the presence of polonium halos in one and
absence of them in the other.
Par. 8.—In this paragraph Wise first comments on the age sequence of
polonium-halo-containing rocks but, interestingly, he does not discuss either the
model or the dating method used to arrive at his age sequence. Rather, the entire
basis for his conclusions on age sequences is the information in his Table II.
Without any disclaimer or discussion of any alternative interpretation of the
geological terms in that table, the "accepted age" referred to there seems to be just
the conventional geological age determined by uniformitarian geology. In other words,
Wise is implicitly using the results of uniformitarian radiometric dating
to establish an age sequence of rocks containing polonium halos. However, as I
show several times in my book (Gentry, 1988), there is no scientific basis for
accepting the crucial assumption of decay rate constancy and without that assumption
the conventional ages determined by radioactive methods are
meaningless.
Much of the rest of the paragraph is given to various claims about the nature of
polonium-halo-bearing rocks but no references are provided to substantiate the
interpretation given. Do such references even exist? If so, why were they not provided?
I would be happy to respond in print to Wise's claims about
polonium-halo-containing rocks if and when he can provide valid documentation for them.
Par. 9—I have referred to Precambrian granites as basement rocks of the
continents to convey the widespread occurrence of polonium halos and also as
an illustration of the vast amount of rock which must be identified with the rocks
that were created. To say, as Wise does, that some rocks below the earth are
of more mafic composition than granites in no way detracts from the evidence
pointing to such granites being among Earth's genesis rocks. In this paragraph
Wise again makes claims about polonium-halo-containing rocks being younger than
"volcanics and even sediments." But I find no documentation for such
claims. I would gladly have responded to them if references had been supplied.
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